Month: April 2009

Tor­ture Top­ics: In his press con­fer­ence of 29 April 2009, in response to a ques­tion on the dis­clo­sure of top secret mem­os on the use of “enhanced inter­ro­ga­tion meth­ods,” Mr. Oba­ma said:

I was struck by an arti­cle that I was read­ing the oth­er day talk­ing about the fact that the British dur­ing World War II, when Lon­don was being bombed to smithereens, had 200 or so detainees. And Churchill said, ‘We don’t tor­ture,’ when the entire British—all of the British people—were being sub­ject­ed to unimag­in­able risk and threat….the rea­son was that Churchill under­stood — you start tak­ing short­cuts, over time, that cor­rodes what’s best in a peo­ple.…

Most peo­ple trav­el to and from my home island of Eleuthera via Nas­sau or Flori­da. Neigh­bour­ing islands on the Bahamas “out­er banks”—Cat Island and Long Island—seem to fall under the old adage: “You can’t get there from here.” Actu­al­ly you can—with an expen­sive char­ter flight or boat—but it’s sim­pler to go via Nas­sau.

Thus three mem­bers of the “Eleuthera Long Rid­ers” bicy­cle club, John Birzten of Governor’s Har­bour, Arring­ton McCardy from Hatch­et Bay, and this writer from Rain­bow Bay—arrived to cycle Long Island on Jan­u­ary 21st-23rd.…

My in-laws gave me the four-book series of his­tor­i­cal nov­els by Michael Dobbs about Win­ston Churchill, set against the back­drop of World War II. I enjoyed them immense­ly. They are very enjoy­able reads while also infor­ma­tive and insight­ful of Dobbs’s sub­jec­tive views of the major play­ers of the era. –T.D.